Self-image in the teenage years: what parents can do

“I’m not going. I look awful.”

A fourteen-year-old stands in front of the hall mirror, ten minutes before a birthday party she has been looking forward to all week. She has changed for the third time. Her mother, waiting with the car keys in her hand, says what almost any mother would say: “You look lovely. Really. Just go.” The bedroom door closes a little louder than it needs to. The daughter does go to the party, fifteen minutes late and in the first top she tried on. The mother stays in the car with the feeling that she said the right thing and that it was still somehow wrong.

The scene is so ordinary we barely notice it. Yet everything I want to write about is in it: a body that is changing, the gaze of peers that suddenly counts for more than the gaze at home, and a parent who wants to help but does not know how. In this post I will try to explain what happens to self-image in the teenage years, what research actually knows about it and what parents can do — and also what they cannot do, however much they would like to.

Why the way you see yourself wobbles right now

Self-image is the picture we hold of ourselves: what I am like, what I can do, how much I am worth, where I belong. (If you are curious how it differs from self-worth and self-confidence, I wrote about that in Self-image, self-worth, self-confidence: how they differ and how each is built.) In childhood the picture is fairly simple. A child knows he is good at football, that his grandmother loves him and that he does not like spinach. In adolescence the picture suddenly widens and becomes complicated.

One of the largest studies of self-esteem across the lifespan, in which more than 300,000 people aged nine and over completed an online questionnaire, found that self-esteem dips on average in the teenage years and then rises slowly through adulthood. The dip was more pronounced in girls than in boys. A later meta-analysis of longitudinal studies, which followed the same people over several years, adjusted the picture somewhat: between the ages of eleven and fifteen, self-esteem on average stays roughly level, and it grows more strongly between fifteen and thirty. Taken together, the two findings say something important — adolescence is not necessarily a period of collapse, but it is a period when self-image is rebuilt and is therefore more vulnerable.

A meta-analysis of gender differences showed that the gap in self-esteem in favour of boys is small, but at its widest precisely in late adolescence. This does not mean that all girls have low self-image and all boys high. It means that the pressure on girls in these years is often different and louder — above all around appearance.

Why now? Because four things happen at once, and any one of them would be enough to make a person feel a little lost.

A body that changes faster than you do

Puberty is the only period after early childhood when the body changes so quickly and so visibly. In two or three years height, shape, skin, voice and smell all change. A teenager wakes up in a body that is not quite last year’s, and suddenly everyone sees it — classmates, teachers, relatives at Sunday lunch who say “oh, haven’t you filled out” or “you’ll be as tall as your dad”.

These comments are rarely meant unkindly. But a teenager does not hear them as observations; they hear them as verdicts. In these years the body becomes one of the main arenas in which personal worth is measured, especially for girls. The international HBSC study, carried out in Slovenia by the National Institute of Public Health, regularly asks young people how they experience their bodies. I will not quote exact Slovenian percentages here, as they shift between survey waves, but the pattern has been similar for years: girls are more often dissatisfied with their bodies than boys, and that dissatisfaction grows with age.

For boys the pressure is often quieter, but it is no smaller. Instead of “I’m too big” it sounds like “I’m too small, too weak, too skinny”. Because boys talk about it less, adults notice it less.

Comparison: peers as the new mirror

In childhood the main mirror is the family. A child knows who they are largely because their parents tell them — with words, looks and the way they respond. In adolescence the mirror changes. The gaze of peers becomes more important, not because parents no longer matter, but because this is exactly the developmental task of adolescence: to find out who you are outside the family.

In the 1960s the psychologist David Elkind described a phenomenon he called the imaginary audience. Once a teenager develops the capacity for abstract thought, they begin to think about what others think of them. And because they are so absorbed in themselves, they assume everyone else is just as absorbed in them. A spot on the forehead feels like a spotlight. A wrong word in front of the class feels like an event people will talk about for years.

Comparison is almost unavoidable in these years. Teenagers compare their looks, marks, popularity, number of friends, clothes, whether they have had a boyfriend or girlfriend yet. Comparison in itself is not an illness — it is how a person works out where they stand. It becomes a problem when it is the only yardstick and when every time it shows the same result: “I’m not enough.” That is when a voice adults know well often starts up — the inner critic.

Social media: both less and more than we think

When parents think about teenage self-image, most of them think of the phone first. The fear is understandable: the screen is full of filtered faces, curated bodies and lives that look flawless. I wrote about what constant measuring against others does to the brain in Comparing yourself on social media: what constant measuring does to the brain, and about bodies in Bodies on social media: what constant comparison does.

Research here is more cautious than the headlines. In 2019 Amy Orben and Andrew Przybylski analysed data from tens of thousands of adolescents and found that the link between digital technology use and wellbeing is, on average, negative but very small — it explained at most around 0.4 per cent of the differences in wellbeing. That does not mean social media harms no one. It means the average effect is small because very different teenagers hide behind the average: for some, social media means contact with friends and a community they cannot find elsewhere; for others, a daily confirmation that they are not enough.

The same research group later noticed that there are windows of particular sensitivity: for girls around the ages of eleven to thirteen, for boys somewhat later, around fourteen and fifteen. At those ages, heavier social media use was linked with lower life satisfaction a year later. For parents this is useful to know — not in order to ban the phone, but to know when a conversation about it makes most sense.

Often more important than the number of hours is how a teenager uses social media. Passively scrolling through other people’s posts and waiting for likes under your own photo works differently from chatting with a friend or following someone who inspires you to draw.

What parents can do

The good news is that parents remain important — even when it looks as though the teenager is not listening. Decades of parenting research show that children’s self-image is most robust where warmth goes together with clear boundaries. Here are some things you can do.

Be warm regardless of marks and looks. A teenager needs to know that at home their worth does not depend on what they bring back. It is not about telling them so more often. It is about your attitude to them not changing when a bad mark comes home or when they do not make the team.

Listen first, correct later. When they say “I’m hideous”, the natural reflex is to contradict them at once. But in doing so you unintentionally signal that their feeling is not welcome. It helps far more if you first hear what is troubling them.

Praise concretely and honestly. Eddie Brummelman and colleagues showed in a study of Dutch children that children whose parents held an inflated view of them — “my child is more special than other children” — went on to show more narcissistic traits, but not higher self-esteem. Self-esteem was linked with parental warmth. Praise a child can believe is concrete: “I saw how much you practised for that performance.”

Say nothing about weight — including your own. A teenager does not only listen to what you say about them. They also listen to how you talk about yourself in front of the mirror, about the neighbour who has “put on weight”, about food that is “naughty”. There is more on talking about bodies without doing harm in How to talk to your child about bodies, weight and food without doing harm. And because children often take on a parent’s attitude to themselves, it is also worth reading Self-image and parenting: how not to pass your self-doubt on to your child.

Make screen agreements apply to everyone. A rule of “no phones at the table” works better when parents keep it too. Teenagers are very quick to spot double standards.

What parents cannot do (and should not try)

This is the part parents find hardest to hear, so I will be direct. You cannot give a child self-image. You cannot talk it into existence, you cannot improve it with a frequent enough “but you’re great”, and you cannot protect it from every bad day at school.

Nor can you control what your child’s peers think of them. You cannot delete the message in the group chat that hurt them, and you cannot go to the party where they will feel unwanted in their place. These are experiences they have to live through themselves — with you in the background, not in front of them.

And you cannot take away the feeling they have. If they feel ugly, it will not disappear because you think otherwise. Ironically, persuasion is often exactly what raises the wall: the teenager reads it as a sign that you do not understand, and next time says nothing. If that wall already feels high, you may find When a teenager goes quiet: how family therapy opens the conversation helpful.

What you can do is stay steady. In these years teenagers bump up against people and things to find out where their limits are. A parent who stays — who does not take offence for ever, does not give up and does not fall apart at every slammed door — is something they may never put into words, but will lean on.

How it sounds in the kitchen

Here is how a conversation might sound in which the parent does not rush to correct. The conversation is composite and does not describe a real person.

“I was the only one not invited again today.”
“Oof. What happened?”
“Nothing. They all went to the shopping centre after school. I found out from an Instagram story.”
“That must have really hurt. Finding out like that.”
“Yeah. Maybe I’m just boring.”
“Is that what you told yourself while you were watching the story?”
“… Yeah. And that I’m ugly.”
“Thank you for telling me. You don’t have to agree with me, but that’s not how I see you. What would help right now?”

In this conversation the parent does not say “that’s not true” or “forget them”. First they hear the pain, then they ask about the thoughts that came after it, and only at the end do they offer their own view — as a view, not a correction.

A conversation like this does not mend self-image in one evening. But the teenager takes away something important: that their feelings are welcome at home, including the ugly ones. And the next time “I’m boring” starts up in their head, there is a small chance another voice will speak up too — one that heard what the parent said.

Exercise: a conversation that is not correction

If you are the parent of a teenager, try the following exercise this week. You need no special preparation, just a little patience.

1. Choose a moment without pressure. A car journey, washing up, walking the dog. Teenagers find it easier to talk when they do not have to look you in the eye.
2. When they say something bad about themselves, do not contradict it straight away. Instead of “that’s not true”, say: “Tell me more. When do you feel like that?”
3. Name the feeling, not the facts. “It sounds as if you felt embarrassed” helps more than a debate about whether the top really was too short.
4. Only at the end share your own view — in one sentence, without persuasion. “I see someone who is trying.”
5. In the evening, write down what you heard. Not what you said, but what they told you. After a few weeks you will notice patterns you did not see before.

If the conversation does not get going, nothing is wrong. Simply trying without correcting sends a message the teenager will pick up — often sooner than they let you see.

When self-image is not the main problem

I want to be honest here, because the word “self-image” tends to get used for everything. Not every teenage struggle is a question of self-image, and not every dissatisfaction with oneself is something that needs fixing.

Some doubt is normal. A teenager who sometimes thinks poorly of themselves is not developing wrongly. They are building a self-image that will be more realistic than a child’s. A parent who wants their child always to be satisfied with themselves unintentionally sets a task the child cannot fulfil.

Sometimes something else lies behind “low self-image”. Prolonged low mood, withdrawal from friends, loss of interest in everything they used to love, sleep problems — these can be signs of depression, not just low self-image. I wrote about how to tell it apart from ordinary ups and downs in Teenage depression: telling it apart from ordinary mood swings. If body dissatisfaction comes together with changes around food, weighing and secrecy, read Early signs of an eating disorder in a teenager and talk to your child’s doctor as soon as you can.

Sometimes the problem lies outside the child. A teenager who is systematically mocked or excluded at school does not have a self-image problem to be fixed at home. They have a problem with the environment they have to walk into every day. Then the parents’ job is to act — with the school, the form teacher and, if needed, the school counselling service.

And sometimes the problem lies in the family. In relational family therapy, in which I am training, we often understand a child’s difficulties as a message about relationships in the family. A teenager who believes they are not enough may be reflecting tension between the parents or a role they have been given at home. In that case it often makes more sense for several family members to come to therapy, not just the teenager.

If a teenager talks about not wanting to live, or is self-harming, do not wait. Call their doctor, the TOM helpline for children and young people in Slovenia on 116 111, the Samaritans helpline in Slovenia on 116 123 (24 hours) or the mental distress helpline in Slovenia on 01 520 99 00 (7 pm to 7 am). In an emergency, call 112.

What to remember

• In adolescence self-image is rebuilt from scratch — because of the body, peers, new ways of thinking and screens, all at once.
• A dip in self-esteem is not the rule for everyone, but it is more common in girls, especially around appearance.
• The average effect of social media is small, but for an individual teenager it can be large; what counts is how they use it.
• Parents help through warmth, listening and concrete praise, not through persuasion and inflated words.
• You cannot give a child self-image — but you can be the steady background against which it grows.